They are, in truth, not "lost", although they have gone considerably astray from Vinland.

In a frozen village in the far north, three Vikings of great skill and strength live quiet lives, spending their days hunting for meat in the surrounding woods. They are Erik the Swift, known far and wide for his great speed and incredible jumping ability; Baleog the Fierce, whose skill with a bow and sword allows him to crush anything in his path; and Olaf the Stout, who carries a shield and is strong enough to carry a full-grown man on top of it.

One cold night, the trio finds themselves kidnapped by an evil green alien known as Tomator, who wants to use the Vikings as exhibits in his intergalactic freak show. The trio aren't about to take this lying down and immediately bust out. Their escape attempt goes a bit awry, however, resulting in them being hurled through time. It's up to you to lead them home.

The Lost Vikings, a 1992 game developed by Silicon & Synapse (the team that would later become Blizzard Entertainment), is a hard game to classify. At first glance it looks like a simple platformer, but it's more complicated than that — two of your characters can't even jump. Puzzles are definitely a big part of the gameplay, but it's not entirely cerebral — in later levels it's a challenge just to stay alive. It's more accurately called a "puzzle-platformer", as the goal is to lead all three Vikings (who you can switch between at any time) safely through each level to the exit. Each character has his own set of abilities which he can use to help the team progress through the level: Erik can jump to higher ledges and use his helmet to bash through fragile walls; Baleog can use his weapons to defeat enemies and flip switches; and Olaf can use his shield to block enemy attacks and as a hang glider to slowly drop to lower levels.

The big draw to the series is how each character's abilities are used in unique ways and in combination with each other to allow for safe progress. For example, one early puzzle requires Olaf to use his shield as a platform for Erik to jump from, giving him the extra height he needs to vault a locked gate. On the other side, Erik can find a key to unlock the door and allow his companions to progress. Some of the puzzles are quite devious, and the game is ruled by Trial-and-Error Gameplay. Lots of it. Lots of it.

In addition, the game has a quirky sense of humor of the type rarely seen in this era of video games (which were usually lucky to get any text at all). It's an absolute joy to guide the bumbling, bickering Vikings through each stage.

In 1997, a long-awaited sequel was finally released (initially for the SNES and later remade for the Playstation, Saturn and PC, alternately titled Norse by Norsewest: The Return of the Lost Vikings). In this game, the Vikings are again ambushed by Tomator, but the Vikings respond by mugging Tomator's minions and taking their gear, giving them new abilities. Erik gains rocket boots (which allow him to Double Jump) and a scuba helmet (which removes his Super Drowning Skills); Baleog takes a lightsaber and a bionic arm (which allow him to attack in eight directions, Belmont-style, and swing off certain gems), and Olaf earns a new cybernetic shield which allows him to shrink and boosts his flatulence to frightening levels. On top of that, the Vikings pick up two new characters in their travels: Fang the werewolf, who can run, jump, attack enemies, and Wall Jump (and comically be mistaken for every furry animal under the sun but a wolf); and Scorch the magic dragon (who has never seen the sea, but would evidently like to check it out), who can fly and breathe fire. To keep the gameplay simple, however, the two newbies would replace one or more of the Vikings every so often, allowing the player to control no more than three characters at a time. The packaging is different, but the game's the same — use the Vikings' abilities to lead them safely through stages full of death traps until you got to Tomator.

This game provides examples of:

Aerith and Bob: While the names "Erik" and "Olaf" have always been common in scandinavia, Baleog is the only person (real or fictional) to ever bear that name.

Adaptation Expansion: The Genesis version of the first game has five levels that the other versions don't, and replaces the music from the demo in Wacky World with an awesomely bizarre remix of the SNES version of the Factory theme that suits the place perfectly, while also giving the Factory a new theme. It also allows three-player simultaneous co-op using the Sega Teamplayer multitap.

Alien Abduction: As the starting plot, some alien collects unique aliens for a collection.

Ambidextrous Sprite: Played straight throughout both games, but curiously, Baleog's portrait in the first game shows his sword in the opposite hand from his sprites.

In the second game, Baleog's robotic arm switches arms depending on which way he's facing. A bit more obvious when climbing ladders.

Justified in-universe by the teleportation magic/technology used by the various characters helping our heroes along being amateur or otherwise faulty; they all get where they're going eventually, but periodically a flub-up sends them off to the bean aisle.

The sisters on the pirate ships aren't sending you straight to where you need to go because they wanna get rich. It takes a threat to convince them to get you there.

Chainmail Bikini: The second game has the Valkyrie, appearing in the game over scene, whose armor is hardly proper for the harsh Scandinavian climate.

Character Roster Global Warming: Part one had only one clearly offensive guy, Baleog. The sequel adds Scorch and Fang, who are both able to attack as well as being more mobile than Baleog (with flight and wall-jumping respectively), leaving Baleog as the sole Mighty Glacier of the 5. However, Scorch only has a ranged attack and Fang only has a melee attack, and neither is as fast as Erik nor able to defend. The balance tends to stick.

Circling Birdies: Or stars. They can be seen after a headbutt or fall from a great height. On Erik, specificially.

Classic Cheat Code: On the second game, kill one of your vikings in the intro level. Every character will gain a new ability. To pull it off, have Olaf stand on the highest part of the ground with his shield up. Have Erik double jump off of him and land on the lowest part. Repeat two more times.

Easy-Mode Mockery: Even though there's practically no way to do it by accident, the game treats it as though you're just that incompetent, and treats it like giving you the new abilities is taking pity on you.

Game Over: The usual game over sequence the player gets when they choose to give up with at least one active Viking alive shows an animation of the dead Vikings being placed on a burning boat out to sea, a traditional Viking sea burial. The active Viking stands on a cliff overlooking the boat's journey. Of course, nobody will be there if you got all the Vikings killed. And if you choose to continue, the dead Vikings return to life via thunderbolt. Finally, if none of the Vikings died (such as if the level was made Unwinnable and the player chose to give up), all three would be on the cliff and no burning boat would be on the water.

Have a Nice Death: Fail enough times on a single level and the vikings'll complain about their defeat, eventually resulting in Thor himself berating you for your failure.

Baleog: I'm so familiar with the beginning of this level, I could do my part blindfolded. Erik: Yeah, it's too bad the player keeps trying to prove the same thing.

Hitbox Dissonance: Those bubbles in prehistoric and wacky world. Many lives were lost when trying to get into/onto them. It helps if you think of them as simple moving platforms, the platform being at the bottom of the bubble.

Mayincatec: The jungle levels in the second installment, which include distinctive ruins riddled with traps and spear-throwing savages, and a shaman who needs to collect some ingredients for supposed time travel.

Medium Awareness: Very much so! The cast will discuss item placement, skill sets, and even the competence of the player (mostly, in cases where a level is repeated multiple times, the lack thereof).

Palette Swap: The Wacky world in the first game features enemies which look like Baleog but with a bizarre color scheme. They look more human (and by extention, less Obviously Evil) in the Genesis version, where they simply use Erik's palette.

Gets all mixed up and swapped between characters in 2 and Norse by Norsewest. Considerably, Eric doesn't know what are donuts, and neither does the Transylvanian witch. Then there's one of the many retry messages in which the protagonists discuss (not in a preset order) whether they should build a rec room, relax and rent some videos, right until one of them asks: "What's a video?"

Quicksand Sucks: There's only one pit of the stuff in the SNES game (more in the Genesis version, which has more levels), but other levels have different hazards that have the same death animation(s).

"The Reason You Suck" Speech: Delivered by Thor, if you fail on a level 16 times. Goes straight into comedy, however, when the trio starts questioning parts of it.

Schmuck Bait: In one of the Egyptian levels, there's a sign that reads "(Skull and crossbones) ->, (Key) <-". True to form, smashing the wall on the right will cause a boulder to roll out and insta-kill Erik.

Sdrawkcab Name: In Norse By Norsewest, one of the items you must collect for a potion in the first level is an Oiramrepus mushroom. Not surprisingly, it looks not unlike something out of that other video game.

Stout Strength: Olaf seemingly possesses the strength to carry at least two other full-grown men on top of his shield. This runs into Fridge Logic when, in the second game, Olaf is still strong enough to hold at least two other characters on his shield, but somehow also lacks the strength to support his own weight when trying to hang from tightropes.

Tempting Fate: "Life is good. I hope I never have to leave my beloved village." Ten seconds later, they were abducted by aliens.

Trial-and-Error Gameplay: Sometimes it can take a few playthroughs before you figure out which path which viking's supposed to take. More noticeable in the first game due to a higher prevalence of one-hit kills and Fang and Scorch in the second game.

Unwinnable by Design: Several levels are at the Polite point of the scale - while you can screw up such that you can't reach the exit (even with all party members alive), you can always restart the level an unlimited number of times, and there's never a need to backtrack to an earlier level.

Use Your Head: Erik uses headbutts to attack and smash walls. Ceilings are added to the list in the sequel. The sequel inverts this with Olaf, who can break floors by farting.

Valley Girl: The sorceress in the second game's early levels embodies this trope. Especially her voice acting.

Wackyland: The second to last set of levels is split between striped levels with balloons, spikes, and pumps to turn the Vikings into balloons (to impale themselves on spikes), and levels made of chocolate and sweeties. Even what appears to be moving checkered background mix becomes a hazard.

What the Hell, Player?: Played for Laughs; one of the possible results of continuing after dying is a sequence where the Vikings complain about having to play the level again and admonish the player for their incompetence. There's another if the player quits a level 50 times, with the trio saying that there aren't any further funny lines upon repeating a level, and that the game's really fun and should be played through. And one if the player quits the level one more time, noting the player is also bad at following directions.

When I Was Your Age...: Thor's rant after you die 16 times in a single level wanders into this. Humorously, the Vikings start questioning parts of the story, to Thor's irritation.

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